Money
I’m delighted when I hear
A crinkling in my pocket
When I walk. I think
I’ve forgotten some money,
Surely a ten or twenty,
A distinguished portrait,
A little green man
Staring back at me.
Then I remember a scrap
Of paper from a grocery list.
At breakfast I scribbled
A thought, a letter,
The outset of something-or-other,
But nothing too moving.
I smile. I am happy.
This is grand.
The Evidence
Here, here is the evidence.
Listen! Pay attention
To a relentless repetition,
Of cruelty, of greed.
In the reign of the tyrant,
Let’s be unequivocal
In what we witness
Despite elaborate obfuscations,
Grotesque rationalizations.
Let’s not stand idly
Wringing pristine hands.
In the reign of the tyrant,
The benevolent king’s compassion
Suddenly a wistful memory,
We’ve lost our humanity.
Our homeless, our aged –
Our veterans plagued
With the images of both
Righteous and absurd war –
Our children, our children,
Suffer a little more,
Die a little faster,
Ostracized, marginalized,
Neglected, deported, all
In the reign, in the name,
At the whim, of the tyrant.
An Effort
The core of the Sunday paper
is not news: a glossy
circular, three pages of
Guns! Guns! Guns!
Sale! Sale! Sale!
a Christmas Spectacular.
Pretty, pink pistols for girls,
youth-action-lever for boys
(hyperbole unnecessary),
there’s no effort in squeezing
a trigger, a seductive little tug.
A child could do it.
However, enormous effort
is required to kill a man, or
an old man, a woman, a child,
so many in the ditches of My Lai,
so many at their desks at Sandy Hook,
our enemies, our enemies.
This all takes time:
an effort to mine lead,
dig and move and sift and drain
the earth for steel, brass, plastic,
an effort, so much thought,
in drafting an efficient weapon.
Our efforts are clever
flying a young man
around the world to end a life
and irrevocably transform his.
Spare no resource. Spare no expense.
Such effort, such effort,
our expertise is astonishing.
Big Men with Big Machines
I got out of bed
To distinguish between
Verity and incubus.
Periodically, this dream,
In variations of anxiety,
Arrives abruptly and unbidden.
(What would Sigmund say?)
Drawn to my window,
I see men have come again,
Big men with big machines,
Loud and busy and blunt.
They produce a clipboard,
Papers with official signatures,
Authority indisputable but all wrong –
The crazy logic of the psyche.
There is chaos everywhere,
Mounds of dirt, sod, and rock,
As they dig an enormous hole,
Its width and depth terrifying.
My house teeters on the lip
Of the chasm, everything
I know, everyone I love
Will fall in, buried and forgotten.
And on each round of this
Subconscious carousel,
I fail to comprehend why
I simply surrender,
More puzzled than troubled
Over my capitulation.
Three Curses
Ellen the secretary,
an unlikely sorceress,
more grandma than harpy,
squinted and poked
two fingers at the air,
an object of malevolence.
I was inclined to take cover
then considered a favor,
a handy malediction.
But she used her gift with
discretion, rarely exacting
curses in seventy-one years.
At the county fair, when her
daughter was muscled out
of a ribbon for her rabbit
by another, pushy, rather rabid
mother, the other kid’s bunny
was dead by the end of summer.
When her quiet respite,
an unobtrusive strand,
egrets, herons, waves lapping,
but prime lakefront property,
was bulldozed, within the year,
the condominiums caught fire
and burned to the ground.
When her boss, a mean, petty
little bastard, endeavored
to eliminate her position,
he was diagnosed with cancer
soon after and nearly lost an eye.
Ellen the secretary.
Sexy Thing
I’m your sexy thing.
You leer, you lust,
Your desire, my pleasure.
I’m your ecstasy,
Your smutty reality.
All the good girls seethe,
My armor sheath
Stunning, steely, specious
Angles and curves.
I swivel my hips.
Saunter up your street,
And all the boys’ heads
Turn, instantly in love.
My tread is my power,
My dread silencing critics,
Clink, clink, clink.
Shamelessly I grind
Against your soft body,
Pierce your skin,
Snap your bones,
In mud, in sand, on brick,
Caen, Kursk, Budapest,
Prague, Tiananmen, Kuwait.
Ride me, fire me,
I’m such a blast,
My lurid muzzle,
My fiery retorts,
Boom, boom, boom,
Rat-a-tat-tat.
David Sapp, writer and artist, lives along the southern shore of Lake Erie in North America. A Pushcart nominee, he was awarded Ohio Arts Council Individual Excellence Grants for poetry and the visual arts. His poetry and prose appear widely in the United States, Canada, and the United Kingdom. His publications include articles in the Journal of Creative Behavior, chapbooks Close to Home and Two Buddha, a novel Flying Over Erie, and a book of poems and drawings titled Drawing Nirvana.
David Sapp, danieldavidart@gmail.com
